1. Field of the invention
The present invention concerns an architecture providing a usage metering service in a telecommunication network management system.
The invention is more particularly applicable to telecommunication management networks (TMN) as defined in the M.3000 series recommendations of the ITU-T (International Telecommunication Unionxe2x80x94Telecommunication Standardization Section).
2. Description of the prior art
Usage metering is one of the five major families of management services of the OSI (Open System Interaction) architecture jointly defined by the ISO (International Standardization Organization) and the ITU-T.
Those families, referred to as functional areas in the terminology specific to the OSI architecture, are:
Fault management,
Usage metering management,
Configuration management,
Performance management, and
Security management.
The usage metering management service is more particularly described in ITU-T Recommendation X.742 xe2x80x9cInformation technologyxe2x80x94Open Systems Interconnectionxe2x80x94Systems management: Usage metering function for accounting purposesxe2x80x9d.
The recommendation specifies only low-level components and does not describe how they are to be adapted to form a usage metering service.
In a telecommunication network, when a call terminates, the exchange of the calling party sends to a billing center a billing docket containing information on the call needed at the billing center (call duration, usage metering area, etc).
In an intelligent network conforming to the Q.1200 series recommendations of the ITU-T, the services issue an equivalent of the billing dockets.
Thus existing solutions depend on the architecture of the telecommunication network and in particular on the billing dockets issued by the exchanges or by the services of the intelligent network.
The object of the present invention is to provide means for implementing usage metering policies independently of the underlying telecommunication network and the services using the network.
To achieve the above objects, the invention provides a telecommunication usage metering management architecture including a telecommunication network formed of a plurality of hierarchically structured elements and management means comprising a hierarchical set of software components, each software component being associated with an element of the telecommunication network and each hierarchical level of the set corresponding to a hierarchical level of the telecommunication network, at least one of the software components including means for sending messages to at least one usage metering unit, and only the lowest level software resources having means for access to information contained in the network elements and relating to the use of the associated network elements.
Particular embodiments of the invention can comprise one or more of the following features:
The messages are notifications which are transmitted to the at least one usage metering unit by one or more notification services.
The notifications and the notification service(s) are supported by a CORBA software architecture.
The at least one usage metering unit transmits to some of the software components a policy for setting parameters of the at least one message sending unit.
The information relating to a call is transmitted at the end of the call in one or more of the messages.
The information relating to a call is transmitted periodically in one or more of the messages.
The management means further include means for setting up and interrupting calls within the telecommunication network, conforming to the specifications of the TINA consortium, for example.
Accordingly, using an architecture according to the invention, usage metering becomes independent of the underlying telecommunication network. This has two distinct advantages:
On the one hand, the information issued by the components of the architecture in accordance with the invention is generic, i.e. independent of the resources of the underlying network, which means that usage metering is no longer tied to specific information contained in the billing dockets issued by the resources of a particular network.
On the other hand, changing a network resource (for example an exchange) does not modify in any way the existing usage metering policy.
In the same manner, information issued by the components of the architecture of the invention is generic, i.e. identical for all the services supported, and so any usage metering policy can be implemented and no longer depends exclusively on specific information contained in the dockets emanating from the network or the particular services.
A further advantage is that billing can use several levels of information. For example, it is possible for billing to be based on actual use of exchanges, the number of sub-networks used, etc.